When we build multi language websites, the focus is usually on the main parts of our site;  copy, menus, footer, logo, sidebars etc.  But it has been my experience that there are a number of hidden parts to your site that are often overlooked and not translated. These missed items are jarring and can impact on a site visitors experience if not translated. In this post I want to give you my top 7 list of things that are often overlooked on a multi language website. 1) 404 Page This is the page that is shown if a page cannot […]

I was working on a client site which was built with English and Chinese languages.  The theme they were using showed excerpts of larger blog posts on the home page, it was working fine in English but when we switched over to Chinese we were getting issues. The Chinese version of the site, instead of showing a Chinese excerpt was showing all of the Chinese content, this is not what we wanted. What Is An Excerpt An excerpt is a cut down teaser of your full content, it is often used in a list of content to show what is […]

When building a multi territory website you should consider the copy you use in different markets.

I run a one man (read person if that term bugs you) multinational business, and we all can, thanks to the levelling effect of the internet.

Many people think that running their website copy through Google translate is enough to make their website multi-language. I’m here to tell you that’s not good enough and the resultant copy will be jarring and amateurish to the foreign language reader. What Is Google Translate It’s tool you can see at translate.google.com.  You cut and paste your copy into the left hand side, select the output language and voila translated content. But is it any good? The Technology Is Too Young It’s taken us thousands of years to make our language as complex as possible, and it takes us as […]